Sarah Hyland Opens up About Mental Health Struggles, Report

Sarah Hyland‘s health battle became so bleak that she thought about ending her life.

Following a series of surgeries, the 28-year-old “Modern Family” star debated suicide because she didn’t know if she’d ever feel well.

“At the time I was 26, but after 26, 27 years of just always being sick and being in chronic pain every single day and you don’t know when you’re going to have the next good day, it’s really, really hard,” Hyland says on Friday’s episode of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show.” “I would write letters in my head to loved ones of why I did it and my reasoning behind it, how it was nobody’s fault. I didn’t want to write it down on paper because I didn’t want anybody to find it. That’s how serious I was.”

Though she was “very, very, very close” to taking action, Hyland ultimately pulled herself out of her depression after voicing her thoughts to a friend.

“It ended up being myself that got me out of that,” she says. “I had to do it on my own. I told myself I had to do it on my own.”

She adds, “Just saying it out loud helped immensely because I kept it to myself for months and months at a time. I didn’t want anybody to know that I was that close, because if they knew they would try to persuade me.”

Hyland revealed in December that she underwent a second kidney transplant after her first one from her father failed. Her brother donated the second kidney.

“For a long time, I was contemplating suicide, because I didn’t want to fail my little brother like I failed my dad,” she told Self magazine.